FPS General

Okan Kaya, pictured above, has set a brand new Guinness world record for longest marathon gaming session after playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 for 135 consecutive hours.

The Australian Kaya played this gaming session over the course of 7 straight days. Now, you mathematicians out there will doubtless be doing the numbers in your head and yes, 7 days does not equal 135 hours. Guinness official rules for these marathon gaming sessions allows for one ten-minute break for each hour played. These breaks are for eating, resting your eyes or whatever else you may need to do with your time.

These ten-minute breaks may also be stored up and used to acquire longer breaks, in which you can eat, sleep or, who knows, play video games or something.

To put this record into perspective, 135 hours is the equivalent of watching all 6 Star Wars film, back-to-back with no breaks, 9 times in a row. It is like watching the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings films 12 times in a row, non-stop. It would take you less time to drive from Seattle, WA to New York, NY and back, than it did for Okan Kaya to hammer out this marathon gaming session.

Kudos to Okan Kaya for carving his path in the world, and we sincerely hope he's gotten some sleep by now.

Source: Game Informer

Did you miss out on the Care Package edition of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2?

In our neck of the woods, they sold out pretty quickly, with supplies running dry before the game even hit shelves. If you had your heart set on this collector's edition, you may be in luck as Curse just launched a brand new sweepstakes this morning, giving Curse Premium users a chance to win a brand new Care Package edition of Black Ops 2.

The Care Package edition comes with:

• MQ-27 Remote Controlled Quadrotor Drone and Stand
• Limited Edition 2-Sided SteelBook
• 2 Collectible Challenge Coins
• Official Soundtrack by Jack Wall with Theme by Trent Reznor
• Exclusive Xbox LIVE® CLAW Avatar Props
• Exclusive Xbox LIVE® Zombies Avatar Props

All you have to do to win is enter to win this epic loot drop is submit your name at http://www.curse.com/sweeps/. Remember, this giveaway is for Curse Premium users only, but if you're not a Premium member...what are you waiting for?

Curse Premium means no advertisements on any of the Curse properties that you love, including FPSGeneral.com; it means faster add-on downloads for games like Minecraft, RIFT, World of Warcraft and Skyrim; add-on sync across all of your computers and one-click updating for all of your add-ons. In addition to all of the great features that the Premium Client offers you, there are also a ton of giveaways like this one that are only available to Curse Premium users.

If you haven't looked into Premium yet, we definitely recommend checking out http://www.curse.com/premium to get yourself set up. Once you're all ready, you can start using your Premium features right away for a chance to win the Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Care Package!

Visit http://www.curse.com/sweeps/cod-care-package for more information on the Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 Care Pacakge, which is open to residents of the United States and Canada. Good luck to all who enter!

Earlier this week, Treyarch removed Nuketown 2025 from the regular playlists in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2. This was a surprising decision, as nothing was previously mentioned that would suggest Nuketown 2025 was a special event-only map.

It turns out that the original plan was to have Nuketown 2025 rear its head during special double XP events and other fun one-off happenings. The map was not actually intended to be a regular rotation experience, but players were not aware of this and expected to have access to Nuketown 2025 whenever they fired up Black Ops 2.

Thus, you can imagine the disappointment that players gave voices to when the map was removed this week. Social media channels were flooded with players expressing their desire to have the map back and, as we should all know by now, Treyarch listens to their community.

After just two short days out of the rotation, Treyarch has reintroduced Nuketown 2025 to Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.

The studio has completely turned their original plans upside down for no other purpose than to give the players what they are asking for and we can't give Treyarch and Activision enough credit for this.

The new Chaos Moshpit is live right now across the board, so make sure you thank your favorite Treyarch developer the next time you see them on Twitter.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 features a wealth of new weapons, items, scorestreaks and equipment that has never been featured in the franchise previously, one of which is the Black Hat PDA.

The Black Hat is designed to help you deal with enemy scorestreak rewards and equipment. When used for its intended purpose, the Black Hat will hack or destroy enemy equipment and can even do so over great distances and through walls. See that UAV flying at 30,000 feet? Just zap it with your Black Hat and that's all she wrote.

How about the Guardian Turret that you can see through two walls a hundred feet out? Zap! It's finished.

As you can see, the Black Hat is incredibly powerful and versatile and something everyone should have equipped on at least one of your custom classes. But did you know that the Black Hat isn't all fun and games?

As evidenced by FPS General team members in the video above, the Black Hat can actually steal friendly care packages from a good distance away. This means that malicious team members can use the Black Hat to steal your care package as it lands, without you able to do a single thing about it.

We'd like to say that honor and duty will prevent team member from doing this but...well, it won't. We're not sure if this is an intended feature or a bug but we'll be interested to see if it is something Treyarch allows or will patch up in the future.

Call of Duty season is officially underway and everyone here at FPS General has been dividing our time between playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and putting together the best set of guides and tutorials on the Internet for our readers. Call of Duty can be a challenge, particularly for new and casual players.

We've been working around the clock to produce guides, walkthroughs and tutorials that will help you get the most out of your Black Ops 2 experience. The game is meant to be fun but sometimes frustration or confusion can get in the way of that when you find yourself repeatedly being killed with little chance to fight back.

If you've been struggling on a particular map or with a particular weapon, our guides are a great way to step up your game and balance out that kill: death ratio. Some of our popular guides this week include:

Top 5 Beginner Tips & Tricks

If you're just starting out in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, this will be a great way to get your feet off the ground. It's important that you start strong, so that when the going gets rough, you don't feel the urge to bail out before getting the hang of things.

These tips and tricks will help you start things off the right way, the first time.

Map Overviews and Flythroughs

Learning the lay of the land can sometimes mean the difference between a disastrous match and a solid performance. Understanding the type of gameplay that each map in Black Ops 2 supports is important, as sometimes the only reason you aren't succeeding is that you're approaching the map in the wrong way.

Learn where to focus your resources on certain maps, including which area you are going to want to focus your attention. On more than one map, you are going to want to control certain areas, regardless of which game mode you are playing.

Discover these control points and more with our map overviews and flythroughs, learning the map and all of its subtleties before you jump into it headfirst.

Keep reading for more of our Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 guides!

Bringing some color to your username in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is incredibly simple, but not a lot of people know how to do it. It's with this in mind that we bring you a quick tutorial on how to change the color of your username in Black Ops 2.

Bear in mind that this is a PC-only feature, and requires nothing more than Steam.

Chances are you've noticed the guy in your lobby with the pink username, doubtless bragging about how 1337 he is for changing the default color. Colored usernames stand out and they're just a lot of fun, even if they don't' bring you any in-game advantage to speak of.

Doing this in your game is incredibly easy and all it takes is the addition of a few simple characters to your Steam display name.

Fire up Steam and navigate to 'Friends --> Change Profile Name...' in the menu. This will open up a new dialog box in which you can change your display name to whatever you fancy. What most people don't know, however, is that you can also add a few characters to that line that will cause your username to display a different color in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 (as well as previous Call of Duty games).

The characters you are going to add are '^^XX' where XX is replaced by a number of your choosing, that corresponds to a particular color.

The number chart is pretty straightforward, keep reading for the full list of color codes and more information on how to change your username color in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2...

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is officially launched and available for play worldwide. By now, early adopters will probably have a good idea where they stand, skill wise, in the game. 

Are you struggling to put together a strong match for your team? If that's the case, we've got a full complement of guides for you to browse, which you can do at http://www.fpsgeneral.com/guides/black-ops-2. In the video above, Small Kiwi expounds on the topic of kick starting your Black Ops 2 career, with his list of Top 5 Beginner Tips & Tricks.

For those of you who like to consume your lessons by reading, rather than watching, Small Kiwi's Top 5 Tips & Tricks for Beginniners in Black Ops 2 are:

1. Check the Minimap 

Located in the upper, left-hand side of your HUD (Heads Up Display), the minimap has all sorts of useful tidbits. Keeping an eye on the minimap can literally tell you where your enemies are, which direction they are facing, where you have allies and where the hotspots of the current fight are situated. Now, some of this information requires certain scorestreak rewards to be active or other variables to fall into place, but the point is, your minimap contains a lot of useful information and can give you the edge if you just keep an eye on it.

2. Sprint Less, Walk More 

When moving around the map, the tendency is there to run as fast you possibly can. Call of Duty is a very fast moving game, with Black Ops 2 featuring some of the fastest action yet. Your instincts are going to tell you to sprint, but don't listen to your instincts, listen to FPS General.

When you draw your weapon to fire just after sprinting, you are going to take a longer time to get your weapon out and ready to fire. This can be countered with perks and attachments, but without those modifiers, sprinting makes you an easier target in a firefight. Let's face it, in most of your engagements in Black Ops 2, the winner is going to be whoever gets their gun ready and starts firing first. Walking more often will make sure that the first one to fire is you.

Keep reading for more excellent Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 beginner tips & tricks.

So, you picked up Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 on launch night and by now, you've probably invested dozens of hours into competitive multiplayer. Chances are you blasted your way through the campaign and maybe you're looking for a fresh experience in the game.

Grab a group of friends and look no further than the cooperative Zombies mode. With more game modes and options than ever before, this is the absolute Zombies experience. In today's video, we're focusing on Survival mode and bringing you a few tips & tricks that will help you survive the experience for as long as possible.

The most important thing you can do is get yourself off to a good start and make sure you earn as many points as possible. This makes it easier to purchase new weapons and perks in future rounds, when the going really gets difficult. Zombies can only take so much damage in the early rounds before they are killed and you can use this to your advantage.

As James illustrates in the above video, putting about four rounds into a zombie before knifing them for the kill will maximize the amount of points you can earn in the early stages. Remember; the zombies are slow at first, so take your time and put your rounds into the upper body/torso area. It's also not a bad idea to let the zombies get through a few barricades to earn some bonus points in boarding them back up.

In addition to that, you're going to want to make sure that before you reach round 15 or so, you...

• Acquire a better weapon in the early rounds, we've had good luck with the MP5.
• Purchase Double Tap, Juggernog and Speed Cola.
• Stay by the mystery box until you are able to draw a light machine gun. This is a must as you move into later rounds.
• Pack-a-Punch your primary weapon as soon as you can!

At the heart of this game mode, Zombies is all about teamwork and cooperating with each other. Stick by your friends as often as possible, so that when someone eventually goes down, the squad is nearby to revive him and keep the fight alive.

Check out the video above and make sure you subscribe to our channel on YouTube for more Black Ops 2 content, including guides, walkthroughs, tutorials and more!

Activision has announced that, for the fourth year running, the Call of Duty franchise has become the largest entertainment release of the year. In just 24 hours, Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 pulled in over $500 million in global sales in just the first 24 hours of availability.

To anyone who has been following Call of Duty over the past few years, it's not a matter of if the franchise will shatter records and exceed sales expectations, but when they will do it.

Bobby Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard

"With first day sales of over half a billion dollars worldwide, we believe Call of Duty is the biggest entertainment launch of the year for the fourth year in a row. Life-to-date sales for the Call of Duty franchise have exceeded worldwide theatrical box office receipts for "Harry Potter" and "Star Wars," the two most successful movie franchises of all time."

If you picked up Black Ops 2 and find yourself needing a little refresher or some useful tips & tricks, you can check out our full array of guides and walkthroughs at http://www.fpsgeneral.com/guides/black-ops-2. 

Congratulations to the teams at Activision and Treyarch on another successful launch!

Tonight we celebrate the release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, a game that we've been looking forward to for a long time. What better way to mark the occasion than withing giving a bunch of stuff away for free?

Curse has teamed up with SteelSeries to deliver an awesome sweepstakes that will see winners walking home with SteelSeries' excellent Siberia V2 gaming headset and some Black Ops 2-themed SteelSeries peripherals as well. All you have to do to win is enter. No frills, no fine print. Just live in North America and enter your name and you have a chance to win.

The prizing looks like this:

One (1) Grand Prize Winner will receive:

• SteelSeries Black Siberia v2 Headset
• SteelSeries Call of Duty: Black Ops II Gaming Mouse
• SteelSeries Call of Duty: Black Ops II Soldier Edition Mousepad

Five (5) Runner-Up winners will each receive:

• Steel Series Call of Duty: Black Ops II Orange Soldier Edtion Mousepad

Take a look at SteelSeries' full lineup of Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 themed gaming gear at http://steelseries.com/.

Make sure you visit http://www.curse.com/ to enter yourself for a chance to win this awesome Black Ops 2 gear!